February 2019

From: Dr Christopher Mabb, Scientific Word Ltd.
To: Our Scientific Word/WorkPlace/Notebook Technical Typesetting list

1. Past version serial numbers:    From time to time users (or support staff) contact us trying to find out what they've actually got installed. One such Email recently said:

   It appears that one of my colleagues, recently left, had installed Scientific Workplace on his PC. Unfortunately I cannot access the PC in “administrator” mode, only “guest user” mode. I cannot find the licence number from the PC but know it is running V5.5 as this is the icon on the desktop. I have also found a box containing the original software. It too has version 5.5 on it. In the box I find an install disk for V3.5 However that may have been placed in the box when V5.5 was installed. However the small installation wallet the disk is in also has a licence number - 401-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz Scientific Workplace Maple Permanent . Are you able to tell me if this licence is for V5.5 – in which case we may be able to transfer it across PC’s?

   We Emailed back with the following information:

   The serial number 401-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz does come up on our database, as belonging to Prof. <Snip>. He bought this as a v3.5 upgrade to his previous v3.0 – see the table below – on 12/9/01.
   

   	SW	SWP
   v1.0	13xxxx	N/A
   v2.0	14xxxx	27xxxx
   v2.5	14xxxxWW	27xxxxWW
   v3.0	SWxxxxxxx	SWPxxxxxxx
   v3.5	300-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	401-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz
   v4.0	300-E0300-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	403-E0300-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz
   v4.1	300-E0400-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	403-E0400-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz
   v5.0	300-E0500-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	403-E0500-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz
   v5.5	300-E0600-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	403-E0600-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz
   v6.0	300-E0700-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz	403-E0700-xxxxx-yyyyy-zzzzz

   We added that:

   If you have access to the C: drive on the machine running Scientific WorkPlace v5.5, you may be able to find the serial number from the file C:\swp55\Licenses\license.lic, which you can open with WordPad. However, the [v5.5] icon on the desktop might indicate no more than that the v5.5 demo was once installed.

   We anticipate that the table of serial numbers above will prove useful to other users in the future.




2. Calligraphic:    Before Christmas, someone still using v5.5 sent us a PDF of a page from a maths paper, with some calligraphic symbols highlighted:

   With regard to sciword 5.5, may I ask if it is possible to obtain the format as illustrated by the highlights in the attached.
   This sort of appearance is very useful in maths/stats writing but doesn’t appear among “miscellaneous symbols”.

   This was easily resolved:

   ...the capital letters shown (T, W, N, G) are available from the Text tag pop-up – Calligraphic (on the Tag toolbar); and the script l is on the second row of Miscellaneous Symbols (on the Symbol Panels toolbar).

   For completeness, you should perhaps also see the related point covered in our February 2013 mailing Item 4.
   Please note that version 5.5 Technical support ended a while back for Standard users, as in our May 2017 mailing Item 8 – though not for our Premier users, Annual Maintenance sites and Support Contracts.




3. Producing HTML pages?    One of the powerful v6.0 New Features is the ability to produce fabulous-looking web pages of your scientific papers; the basic process is shown in this demo video, and documented in our December 2015 mailing Item 7.
   We've discovered a problem, however, when creating xhtml documents from Scientific Word/WorkPlace for viewing on secure https sites. You can see the problem here at Failed HTML Export when compared to the correct version at Successful HTML Export (the easiest tell-tale is the presence or absence of the blue titles and background).
   This problem will not manifest when viewing an exported xhtml file on your local machine; nor when viewing it uploaded to an http site. But when uploaded to an https site, TLS/SSL doesn't like importing from the non-https addresses in the opening lines of my.css:

   @import url("http://www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/latex_internal.css");
   @import url("http://www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/baselatex.css");
   @import url("http://www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/latex.css");
   @import url("http://www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/article.css");

   The solution is straight-forward – simply edit the .css file (in the associated css folder) removing the http: as follows:

   @import url("//www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/latex_internal.css");
   @import url("//www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/baselatex.css");
   @import url("//www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/latex.css");
   @import url("//www.mackichan.com/supportfiles/6.0/css/article.css”);

   We apologise for the inconvenience; we trust that a later build than the current v6.0.29 will make this manual adjustment unnecessary.




4. Editable .tex files:    A user Emailed to say:

   Have received an encouraging response from [Journal Name] to a paper submitted as a standard PDF compiled from a SciWord 5.5 document I'm a bit worried that they ask for an editable source document in Word, (which I havn't got) or TeX. Is there something I need to do beyond the LaTex formulation implicit in the SciWord document?

   Here's where we give away free access to one of our Training videos... We Emailed him back saying:

   To produce editable .tex files for others not using Scientific Word you will want to save the document in Portable LaTeX; we suggest you watch section 5.1 of the videos of our v5.5 Training Course; you can watch the video by clicking here. The relevant parts instruct you how to:
   

   1. Save the document in Portable LaTeX (6m10s – end)
   2. Wrap this Portable LaTeX file to produce a .rap file containing all the graphics, style files etc (1m50s – 5m13s). We recommend you also send them the Portable LaTeX .tex file in case they have problems unwrapping the .rap file.

   To export your .tex file to produce a Word document (section 4.3 of the Training Course) we suggest you read our June 2012 mailing Item 3.

   The complete v5.5 Training videos are available to download for £197 + VAT, with Educational discount to £147 + VAT.




5. Installation problem:    I'm not sure whether we got this one right – at least not initially – but the thought process we followed might be helpful for others. The user was:

   ...trying to install SciWord on a new work laptop using an external DVD drive.
   The message I keep getting is attached...

   giving an error message we could not recall ever having seen before. Initially we replied with the standard list of things to check:

   Here are some things it might be:
   

   1. Did you reboot first?
   2. Are you following the installation instructions at https://www.sciword.co.uk/!v5.5%20Installation.pdf ?
   3. Specifically, did you right-click – Run as Administrator?

   and asked which version of Windows he was using. We drew a blank – he replied:

   Many thanks for such a quick reply... I'm using Windows 10.
   Yes I've rebooted. Followed usual instructions. Tried running both as non-admin and admin user.
   The reason for the external drive is the new laptop doesn't have a built-in drive.

   and so we concluded:

   ...since you've tried the usual things we suggested, the error is probably caused by the external drive. Why not just download the .exe file to the laptop's hard disk according to the link in the installation instructions (Step 2)?

   We have certainly seen a handful of cases over the years where problems have arisen from network drives being mapped to different letters from the usual C: and D: – so we could certainly believe that having the installation CD in an external H: drive (for example) might be problematic...
   ...although in the event it turned out to be an admin. rights issue.




6. v6.0 Gmail addresses:    When new users sign up for the 30-day trial of v6.0 – whether on our Demo page or the individual product pages for Scientific Word, Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook – they receive an initial Email to confirm their Email address before MailChimp sends the serial number and a sequence of mailings with techical tips to help them make the most of their 30-day trial.
   For those users with Gmail addresses, however, we've seen cases where the serial number and subsequent Emails go into the Gmail Promotions tab instead of the Primary Inbox. Our sign-up confirmation page does try to warn people, saying:

   Please check your Email now – and look in your spam folder or Gmail Promotions tab if it's not there in a couple of minutes...

   but that message often seems not to get noticed. I guess people must be so excited about getting to use our software free of charge for 30 days    ;-)
   If you find the serial number in your Gmail Promotions tab, please drag it to your Primary Inbox so as to train your Gmail settings to ensure our follow up Emails go into your Inbox too.




7. Sunrise, sunset:    Mathematicians who like a challenge, read on. In fact, if you want to reproduce the challenge fairly, try this – not only without pencil and paper, but – while out for a walk.
   
   Walking in the countryside around Peterborough one afternoon last week it struck me that it was getting dark sooner than I'd expected, despite it being a bright day. Then I remembered I'd been in Llangollen, North Wales until a couple of days before.
   So I wondered, as I walked, whether it would be possible to estimate accurately how much earlier the sun would set in a place in the UK that was further east by a distance of... Oh I don't know, about 3 hours' driving time.
   Several approximations and some mental trigonometry later, I had an answer in minutes – which I proceeded to check by Googling the sunset times for the two places that day. At that point I was:
   
   
   1. Pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of my calculation.
      => Question 1: How many minutes later was it?
   2. Surprised, less pleasantly, to see that the time for sunrise in Llangollen was later by an additional 8 minutes... which I hadn't anticipated at all. OK, I reasoned (walking along): so daylight today is 8 minutes shorter in Llangollen; that will be because it's further North, in the northern hemisphere, in winter. But 8 minutes... really?? And that must depend on how close to the shortest day it is, since days get longer the further North you go in summer.
      By now, my capacity for visualising in 3-dimensional space the effect of the Earth's orbit around the sun and its rotation on its (tilted) axis on the relative sunrise and sunset times at places (x₁,y₁) and (x₂,y₂) was being somewhat stretched... plus, I was approaching the Costas I was going to.
      => Question 2: Devise an algorithm (capable of being applied mentally while walking) to estimate the difference in length of daylight between different latitudes throughout the year.
   
   We reserve the right to include any contributions in a future mailing (anonymously, if requested); and if anybody seriously impresses us then perhaps a gift card will be taking you to Costas too!